Last month the Church commemorated the Feast of the Discovery of the Cross.
What is so festive about this episode?
If at all, it should elicit indignance at the domestication of the Cross of Christ by the Empire.
The Cross, the most ignominious imperial instrument of execution, which Christ grabbed from the hands of the empire by effacing His flesh and blood, emptied it of its imperial import, once again falls into the hands of the empire.
The empire then conveniently and subtly converts the crucified Christ into the crucifying Christ co-opting the Cross as the signet of war beginning with the Emperor Constantine.
Crusades and Holocaust were glaring examples of the new meanings ascribed to the Cross of Christ by the Empire.
From where it was implausible that a Christian would fight in the army as it involved killing, post Constantine’s legalization of Christianity the entire army became Christian.
Prelates inspired mercenaries for war by assuring them that they would get a free pass to Heaven if they killed for the Church.
Later the liturgical texts of the Church were systematically cleansed of the imperial smirch by shifting the blame of executing Christ exclusively to the Jews from the Roman Empire thereby completey exonerating the Empire.
Cross, the very instrument of inclusion (John 12:32) was insidiously transmuted to the instrument of discrimination and detest by the imperial hegemony.
Overnight the Church was transported from margins to mansions; streets to Roman basilicas. Scriptures began to be read from the position of power and privilege and the profound power of powerlessness that Jesus proclaimed and practiced was ditched.
A radically democratic community of equals and disciples was metamorphosed into a hierarchical model of government, ruled and controlled by kings, lords, princes, and men.
It was made axiomatic that the enemies of the Empire were the enemies of all.
All structures developed by the Empire for the so called 𝘣𝘦𝘯𝘦 𝘦𝘴𝘴𝘦, the well-being, of the Church, completely and irrevocably altered the 𝘦𝘴𝘴𝘦, the being, of the Church.
All this because the Empire never converted to Christianity; it was Christianity which converted to the Empire.
Repent and Retrieve the Cross from the clutches of the Empire. Better late than never.
~ 𝐃𝐚𝐲𝐫𝐨𝐲𝐨 𝐅𝐫. 𝐁𝐚𝐬𝐢𝐥
Urho, The Way 